Look, I like cats. I grew up with them. I own one. I’ll chase them down on the street to try and pet them. But just because I have a cat, that does not make me a cat lady.
Frankly, I haven’t personally been accused of being one either. But I’m still sick of people pushing the cat lady stereotype on people who simply appreciate goofy creatures.
There’s a reason why the Internet is obsessed with cats. They’re cute. They curl up into tight little balls, wrapping their tails securely around them. They knead on your belly. They do dumb things like flip over themselves while trying to try to catch an intangible splotch of light. Cats are generally a joy to watch and be around.
But my love, and any other cat lover’s love for cats, does not preclude us from loving other animals. It doesn’t mean I don’t like dogs or that I wouldn’t squee just as hard at the sight of one. We are not inherently “cat ladies” (and I resent the fact that it’s such a gendered concept — men can love cats just as equally) just for appreciating cats.
Why is it dog people versus cat people? Can’t a dog person also be a cat person, and vice versa? I know I am. Via my two brothers, I essentially have four dogs that I love visiting.
A friend of mine was so enamoured of the cuteness of my own cat that she is adopting one of her own. This is what she said to me recently:
Like, that’s all sorts of bullshit. She gets a cat and that automatically makes her a cat lady? Maybe it makes her more aware of the world. Maybe it makes her more loving, wanting to take care of an animal that needs it, taking it away from a life of 24/7 crates. Maybe she just likes the companionship and, hey, remember that little thing where most residences will allow for cats but not for dogs? Or maybe that guy is just a dick, which he seems to be from all the stories I’ve heard about him.
I’ve had a lot of people assume that because I like cats, I also like cat-branded gifts. Like cats on pillows. Or cat blankets (full disclosure: my office blanket, which was a GIFT and not my selection whatsoever, is covered in cats). Cats on cups and cat bookends and cat umbrellas and…
Cat-owners’ lives do not necessarily revolve around cats, just like any other pet owner’s life does not necessarily revolve around their pet or the kind of pet they chose to live with. Just as gamers are not all basement-dwellers who never see the light of day, cat-lovers aren’t all sexless anti-social shut-ins with no other interests but their chosen animal companion.
People who like cats like cats. The living, breathing, curling-into-a-ball animals we live with. But we may not necessarily like covering our living space with cat decor, or stacking cat items in our closets and on our shelves. We may not want 50 cats in our homes. We may not care to decorate our apartments to make it easier for our cats to get around. We may not be single, and we don’t always get cats just to help ward off loneliness. We may not even be ladies.
We love cats! Stop shaming us for it.
Comments
94 responses to “I’m Sick Of This ‘Cat Lady’ Bullshit”
blahblahblah, nobody was being serious.
Blogtaku
Standard Jezebel article.
Shame is taken, not given. Be shameless! Revel in your cat-lovery!
This isn’t a joke rant yea? She was actually offended being called crazy cat lady? Really never thought anyone would actually get offended by that.
The dude with the inappropriate over-sharing is not cool though.
Seems we are seeing an increase in these irrelevant life threads lately….
It is the slow news calm before the storm that is e3, meaning if these people want to be paid up until then, they will give out their life stories, so yeah, a very slow news day
It’s not irrelevant. There’s one sentence buried in there mentioning gamers. Instant relevancy!
Hey I have an article about how I vacuumed under my nephews bed and found two pizza boxes and a dead rat. I can easily turn that into 300 words Kotaku. Will you pay me for it?
Seriously, FAR more interesting than this…
What sort of rat?
And what brand of pizza outlet were the boxes from?
Oh man, the rat. When I picked up the rat, its fur slipped through my hands, matted in dried blood. I looked at it, brown blood, once fresh and red, now old and decayed, congealed and sickening. The thinning of the ratsac had done its job, the Rat had died a horrible death and done its deathcrawl under my nephews bed… ironic it should crawl to food when food had been its downfall in the firstplace.
The pizza boxes sat stacked behind it, a roach scurried out, ‘Pizzahut’ one said, a lie, there was no longer a ‘hut’ associated with this venue, just a small insignificant outlet that pumped out cardboard tasting bread. ‘Pizza Capers’ the other said, a step up in quality, but a declining one at that. I nudged the boxes, a spider ran from the second one, I shrieked a little, the arachnapobic that I am.
I poked the rat, not expecting it to move, but in some sick, twisted way possibly thanks to Rick Grimes and co. almost hoping for some bastardry of a zombie rat to come back to life and attack me… maybe it’s time to give The Walking Dead a break… I piled that rat into the garbage bag, followed by the pizza boxes. Then dumped them on my nephews bed followed by a simple note:
“Clean your bedroom you lazy fuck.”
To fit here I think your story needs more bitching about the rat offending you. I mean how dare it have the audacity to die under a bed in your general vicinity.
Excellent review, would read again 🙂
You just made clicking on this link worth my time.
Throw in something seemingly connected to feminist rights and you’re hired.
The rat was a female??? It demanded the same amount of ratsac as a male rat???
Please include more photos in this article. Its not an article without photos. Maybe some animated GIFs too; for those mobile readers.
Did your nephew keep the rat there or was he unaware of it?
lol he ended up throwing the whole thing into the bin. Oddly enough, the dead rat and old pizza boxes were the least smelly thing in his room, the rat was also the least stiff thing under his bed, next to some socks that could double for wooden planks…
Ugh… teenage boys.
At least its not as bad as her How to Take a Perfect Selfie advice.
I’m glad i missed that one.
Can’t say I would be all that offended by an idiots joke opinion.
I doubt anyone would honestly think getting a cat automatically makes you a crazy old cat lady, you should embrace the joke and call the kitten a, cat lady starter kit, or something.
And if somebody does mean it seriously, you can set your army of trained night kitties to deal with them. “Fly my pretties, I mean, pounce my pets!!”
:/ Office Blanket ? Why even
I know a lawyer who keeps a cricket bat in his office. Not a signed collector’s item. Just a bat. Never been used. Props it against the wall.
ZTU Commander Ted Pratt keeps barrels in his office.
Anyone?
His name wouldn’t be Ian Faith by any chance would it?
No, it’s a guy whom I won’t name for fear of recriminations 😉
Air conditioning is a bitch.
Surely a nice warm cardi with a cat embroidered on the pocket would work just as well for that?
I remember when you needed a minimum of 3 cats and a diagnosable personality disorder to be considered a ‘cat lady’… people nowadays just want to drop the standards so they can increase the range of people they feel they can be mean and insulting to (or vicariously insulted by)!
I remember when Kotaku was a gaming blog
Pepperidge farm remembers
I don’t think even Pepperidge farms has a memory *that* long…
lololol
… written like a true cat lady. We know what you are, Tina.
[ ] Video Games Culture
[ ] Japanese Culture
[ ] Pop Culture
[x] Victim Culture
Bahahaha stealing this for any Tina Amini article in future.
Ha ha, Tina’s alright. She wrote some good Borderlands articles if I remember correctly.
I can see the headline now…
“I’m Sick Of This ‘Weresmurf’ Bullshit”
… and then weresmurf writes an article about being discriminated against.
THE CYCLE CONTINUES!
KOTAKU HATES SMURFS! SO SICK OF THIS SMURF-HATE-SPEECH!
Headline maybe? 😀
Does it make you feel… blue?
Such MRA. Very fedora.
people need to relax. Everyone is freaking out over anything these days. That guy just sounds like a dick, didn’t take more than those 2 sentences to learn that.
I wish I had a cat, but I live in a second story apartment and I don’t want the thing to constantly be locked inside. It should have freedom to leave and come back as it pleases, its an animal afterall.
Don’t ever get a job at a zoo. Or do, because the resulting Youtube footage is bound to be great.
“I was only letting the lions and tigers have the freedom to come and go as they please!”
lol Well lions and tigers do belong in the wild and not in cages. It’s cool if they help them recover and then let them go after some life’s downs, but they should never be locked in for life, they’re animals. Those things need freedom.
Seems these days that you can’t just be a dick for no good reason, it has to be because you are sexist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, feminist and so on
Hell, the only way you can murder someone and not have it be about some sort of political statement is if you are a white male killing another white male.
Everyone just wants to label everything :\
Labelist!
“What societal problems of the greater public today led to these killings? Tonight, on Cultural Guilt, we examine the self-loathing white male murder spree of the one called Nexi.”
Wait, am I killing self-loathing white males or am I a self-loathing white male driven to killing? (because I would say there is a lining of truth on the second one with regards to the self-loathing)
I suspect both.. the emo-ness of modern suburbia got you started on the killing.
I would like a cat, but I already have two cats. They are adorable.
And while I partially agree with the sentiment, cats on average live longer if they stay indoors, and also won’t get a chance to kill all our precious natural wildlife.
I’m not trying to convince you or something, I’m just saying these things for some reason. I don’t know what I’m doing.
It’s because you’re a crazy cat man.
I’M A CAT MAN!
REEOW!
Why is this article here?
Who approves kotaku articles?
Is there actually any sort of article review process at all?
Legitimate question I would like to know.
I’d like to know too. It would make sense if the Cat Lady incident was a trigger for writing about society’s propensity for stereotyping people to avoid understanding them and then exploring how that applies to gamers and common gaming related hobbies like anime and cosplay. This though seems to be someone taking to Twitter to say “OMG. Some guy just said I was a Cat Lady. #1CatIsNotCatLady”.
Why is this article here?
Clicks. Clicks. Clicks.
A number of articles here the past few months have kind of enraged me solely because they got my +1 click from it by using some vague and/or clickbait-ish headline.
At least this one was pretty obviously going to be absurd so I knew what I was doing clicking it.
Mark told me a long time ago that Kotaku AU doesn’t operate on a pay-by-clicks money scheme.
I don’t actually know how they do make money, but I have adblock off for here at least.
Oh I wasn’t trying to say that’s precisely how they do operate, but every page view is obviously more coverage in general and surely that does more to help than hinder.
I mean it’s really the only way to explain the amount of ‘articles’ on here these days that a Tumblr blogger could compete with.
It’s just really fucking irritating thinking you might be about to read a decent article only to have the headline be nothing more than misleading clickbait, and you’re left looking at what is a personal rant and nothing news related at all.
To be clear, I had no illusions this article was going to be anything but what it is when I clicked on it. Because if it has one thing going for it, it’s that the headline is one of the least misleading I have ever seen on Kotaku.
you are going to get moderated out of existence. I think Tina just needs to make her monthly article quota. First it was the selfie article, now this. Hopefully she has made her quota.
You know I ditched facebook and other social media so I wouldn’t need to read about random people posting incessantly self-indulgent crap about their lives. Nice to see it’s spreading into gaming news sites as well. Thanks for the share Tina. Please tell us more.
Actually I’m working on crazy cat lady as my post-retirement plan!
Speaking as a dick, he was just being a dick. Dicks tend to make inappropriate jokes no matter what the subject matter or who they’re talking to. It’s both a curse and a privilege
I read that as cats cats cats cats rant rant cats rant cats.
Your problem is you were offended at being called a “cat lady”. Cat ladies are boss. Own that shiz.
How I imagine Tina reacting to being called ‘Catlady’…
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130920112557/simpsons/images/6/60/Best-simpsons-gifs-cat-lady.gif
that @dashals guy really doesn’t like you, weresmurf. (i counted)
*shrug* His mum sure did.
But seriously, its someones fake account, they’ve had it for ages and for some unknown reason seek to downvote me all the time. Pretty pathetic. Oh well. You can go back through most articles and find the persons downvoted me consistently. Dunno why honestly. lol. To hold a grudge for years over something, no idea what, is pretty odd and sad behaviour.
@weresmurf you on a roll today buddy. getting my upvotes all over the place.
Legend 🙂
Smurf haters man, smurf haters!
I’ll even it out for you bud =P
Nawww feel the love 🙂
These are the kind of articles that really make me question why I visit this website.
The dude is a dick… and that is where it should end lol Idiots will be idiots after all
If someone called me a crazy dog dude, i’d say ‘thankyou’ and go on my merry way.
I am a cat lord!!!! <3
this IS kotaku right? i feel like I’m not on a gaming news site all of a sudden…
#thingsacrazycatladywouldsay
I’m also sick of people saying they’re adopting cats with the tone and seriousness as if they are adopting a child.
…Then treating said cat as a child.
FFS Kotaku….or should I say…Cataku. …im sorry.
Frankly, I haven’t personally been accused of being one either.
That would be because a cat lady is not someone who has a cat, but someone who has 20. Article is irrelevant and making a fuss out of nothing.
So you’re new to Tina Amini articles? Let me be your guide…
Your second paragraph had more content in it than this article.
If you need someone to write articles about actual things and stuff.
I write about things and stuff.
Even computer games occasionally.
There is a difference between liking cats and being a “crazy cat lady”
So…i decided to click on Tina’s name and look at previous articles.
One of the first on the list is “The japanese cat game we can’t stop playing”
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/05/the-japanese-cat-game-we-cant-stop-playing/
CAT LADY
CRAZY CAT LADY
AAAAAAAHHHHHH
Its gotta be the brain worms – http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/do-cats-control-my-mind/282045/
shutup cat lady
:p
Alternate headline
“I’m Sick Of This ‘Tina Amini’ Bullshit”
Kotaku author Tina Amini writes an article about how having one cat does not make someone a crazy cat lady, while posting her adoration for a Japanese cat game. The author’s friend was offended that a dick in the office decided to jump to the conclusion that she was a crazy cat lady because said friend was going to adopt a cat.
Kotaku Aus readers have become fed up with this tumbler stuff that is now occurring on a website that should be reporting on video games and related culture.
And I’m bored
And now she is the crazy cat lady after going in such an insane rant. Promotion, yay!
And here I was hoping this was a review for the game called, the cat lady.
Whatever Cat Lady. Shhhh…
First step is acceptance…